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...and I'm sure the first person in North America to get infected with West Nile virus did this as well.

Certainly. That doesn't mean you, and others who insist on talking deadly viruses when I tell you I don't have to fear them because they don't yet exist where I live, have a point.

It's not like I know what's gonna be the next deadly stuff here. If it's the mosquitos I should avoid, or perhaps the neighbour's cat that probably carry zillions of bugs. Unprotected sex didn't use to be deadly. Now it can be, so what's next... kissing? God knows.

The place where I have to cross the road to get to the grocery store is much more likely to get me killed than any possibility of catching viruses that, as of today, is unheard of within thousands of kilometers.

In a country that have plenty of mosquitos (you can google "Herräng dance camp" and mosquitos) but they don't carry any nasty stuff, being afraid of mosquito bites "in case you might catch something" is illogical reasoning. Unless, of course, you spend all your energi avoiding things that might eventually get dangerous. In which case this illogical fear in itself is going to ruin your life.

The place where I have to cross the road to get to the grocery store is much more likely to get me killed than any possibility of catching viruses that, as of today, is unheard of within thousands of kilometers.

I'm not really au fait with buddhist terminology, but what is classed as karmic behaviour for a mosquito?

This is sort of like asking whether the Bible supports the priesthood of all believers. Religions, especially older religions, aren't structural philosophy – they're not held to the same sort of standards. So you can't point at them and just go 'And the answer is....'

Having hedged my answer sufficiently then:

Generally speaking:

All behaviour is karmic behaviour. Karma is a reflection of your inner life, not of your outward actions.

Karma means something like... 'actions that come from your intentions.' In Buddhism (in general) the nature of an act is determined by the nature of the intent driving that action. When someone says 'good' karma they may as well be saying 'good' action.

There are a lot of teachings around how good and bad karma are believed to affect people, but it's not clear that it's necessarily any more mystical than saying that one misstep leads to another, or that what goes around comes around. Early forms of Buddhism didn't even seem to believe that your karma affected your cycle of rebirth. Arguably, if you believe that what affects your cycle of rebirth is how enlightened you are, karma's effect on it is more a transitive than a direct relationship anyway.

One interpretation would be: It just so happens that doing things with ill intent tends to lead you to bearing more ill intent, and that tends to lead you away from enlightenment, which tends to affect how you'll be reborn....

But the pattern isn't taken to be perfectly deterministic. You can go up or you can go down.

The point of Buddhism isn't to follow a set of rules. It's to attain enlightenment - or at least to become more enlightened. In Buddhism you should do things because you've experienced them to be true, not because someone's told you to do them. If I just do something because some monk told me that I'd be rewarded at the end, I'm not likely to attain much enlightenment. I'd just be copying the outward behaviours, the superficial trappings of enlightenment.

As for how a mosquito becomes more enlightened, I honestly couldn't even venture a reasonable guess. With karma so bound up in how a creature thinks, and how a creature thinks being so bound up in how it perceives the world - I think that sort of question's getting way out into, 'How do bats see?' sort of territory .

Committed to avenge the death of his master, the samurai finally meets up with the man he has sworn to kill. As he is about to make the killing strike, SPLAT, spit in the face. The samurai sheathes his sword and walks away. (The samurai would not kill in anger).

Committed to avenge the death of his master, the samurai finally meets up with the man he has sworn to kill. As he is about to make the killing strike, SPLAT, spit in the face. The samurai sheathes his sword and walks away. (The samurai would not kill in anger).

So, if a mosquito lands on your arm ...

FWIW ... any time you hear a zen koan or Buddhist saying, it's a safe bet it eventually points back to understanding the workings of the mind. When you hear a bird chirp ... where are you?

A. Harmonize with it, allowing it to bite your arm and withdraw blood for substenance?

B. "Do no harm" and compassionately remove and release it.

C. Smack the disease ridden blood sucker dead.

D. I don't do Aikido.

dps

E. Thankfully, I do do Aikido (dew?). Therefore, just as it bites, I harmonize with it and compassionately, but convincingly perform the rarely seen "Mosquito Nage" technique, thereby bringing the encounter to a mutually amenable conclusion while also driving home the point to said offender that I'll not be his, or any other blood suckers human smorgasbord.